Staff Biography

Greg Nojeim

Senior Counsel and Director, Freedom, Security and Technology Project

Greg Nojeim

Senior Counsel and Director, Freedom, Security and Technology Project

Greg Nojeim is a Senior Counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Director of its Freedom, Security & Technology Project. In this capacity, he conducts much of CDT’s work in the areas of national security, terrorism, and Fourth Amendment protections. Greg is also Co-Chair of the Coordinating Committee on National Security and Civil Liberties of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section of the American Bar Association.

Greg works to limit the threat to privacy posed by governmental wiretapping and monitoring of Internet communications. He was instrumental in bringing together the broad coalition of groups from across the political spectrum that worked to strip overly intrusive wiretapping proposals from the 1996 anti-terrorism law. He has substantial expertise on the application of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and on the civil liberties protections it affords. Other areas of his expertise include governmental data mining, the PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the privacy implications of aviation security measures.

Greg spent five years as an attorney with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart (now Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP) where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, securities law, and international trade. Greg also served for four years the Director of Legal Services of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). He conducted much of ADC’s work in the immigration, civil rights, and human rights areas.

Prior to joining CDT in May 2007, Greg was a Legislative Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union and served as the Associate Director and Chief Legislative Counsel of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. There, he was responsible for analyzing the civil liberties implications of federal legislation relating to terrorism, national security, immigration and informational privacy. He frequently testified before congressional committees and the various commissions Congress establishes on anti-terrorism legislation and aviation security legislation. Greg testified before Congress about counter-terrorism proposals following the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing, the use of secret evidence in immigration proceedings, driver’s license privacy, aviation security profiling and intrusive body-scan technologies, and the threat to civil liberties posed by national ID cards.

Greg graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Rochester in 1981, where he studied Political Science. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1985 and sat on the Editorial Board of the Virginia Journal of International Law.